Chasing Alpine Ghosts: a 15-Year Journey Through Grindelwald’s History
The Swiss Alps are a landscape of constantly shifting beauty, but they are also a stark indication of a warming planet. For decades, the Upper Grindelwald Glacier (Oberer Grindelwaldgletscher) was one of the most accessible ice fields in Europe, attracting tourists from all over the world.
Lower wooden staircase
This is the story of a 15-year interest in a single, volatile mountain flank - a journey that began in 2010 by chasing a retreating glacier as a casual tourist, and culminated in 2025 as an experienced mountain hiker, tackling a rugged, vertical world of engineering phantoms and raw, exposed stone…
Upper wooden staircase
To understand this mountain flank, however, one must remember that Grindelwald is the cradle of alpine tourism.
The Cradle of Mountaineering: Grindelwald’s Tourism Legacy
Long before high-tech cable cars and modern gore-tex gear, Grindelwald was a sleepy glacial farming village. Everything shifted in the late 18th century as the Romantic movement swept through Europe. Intrepid writers, poets, and artists arrived, drawn by the dramatic visual contrast of emerald-green valleys directly colliding with the colossal ice sheets of the Upper and Lower Grindelwald glaciers.
Enge cable car & the Wetterhorn
By the mid-19th century, the Golden Age of Alpinism was born, and Grindelwald became its beating heart. The village transformed into a bustling hub for wealthy British travelers, spearheaded by the establishment of the Alpine Club in London. Local farmers and chamois hunters laid down their tools to become the world’s first professional mountain guides.
The 890 steps were pretty steep...
This golden era reached a fever pitch on September 17th, 1854, when Sir Alfred Wills made his historic ascent of the Wetterhorn - the very mountain anchoring the trail in our story. His climb effectively launched mountaineering as a global sport, turning Grindelwald into a legendary tourist playground where humans continually engineered wilder, bolder ways to reach the high ice…
Part 1: The Rise, Twilight & Fall of the Hehlischopf Trail (2007–2025)
Our story crosses into modern history in August 2007, when the local collective (Bergschaft) pulled off an audacious feat of high-alpine construction. The glacier was melting backward so rapidly that an impassable rock chasm had opened up between the old trails and the ice tongue. In a desperate race to keep the glacier accessible for the modern wave of tourists, they built a path designed to let travelers literally reach out and "touch the ice."
Approach to the bridge & viewing area
The approach was pure magic. You started from a quiet parking lot near Grindelwald, winding through a dense, shaded pine wood trail. Tucked deep in the trees sat a rustic wooden valley shop and ticket kiosk, where you paid a fee before testing your nerve against the mountain.
Crossing the bridge was great fun...
The construction was an absolute marvel: 890 individual wooden ladder steps (Holzleiternweg) anchored directly into the vertical limestone rock face, conquering 130-140 meters of sheer vertical height. Cresting that knee-aching staircase brought you to a tiny, high-altitude sanctuary - a small, rocky plateau hosting a wooden hut functioning as a cafe, complete with a portable toilet for weary travelers.
Just past it swung the Hehlischopf Suspension Bridge (Hängebrücke Hehlischopf), a 60-meter-long Nepal-style steel wire crossing spanning a 56-meter-deep canyon to a small viewing area.
The glacier was here just a few years ago
When I first stood on those swaying cables as a tourist in 2010, I caught the trail in its twilight years. The landscape was already stark. The roaring meltwater from the Weisse Lütschine river acted like a high-pressure firehose below, flushing sediment away and leaving a canyon of bare, gray rock rather than traditional moraine walls. The glacier tongue was only just visible, slipping away quietly back into the shadows…
The desperation of the chase was clear; I watched reckless tourists climb past the safety barriers to scramble onto the unmonitored rocks just to get a closer view - a dangerous gamble against smooth pathless rock and sudden rockfalls.
In 2010 this was all you could see of the glacier
Sadly, nature won the race in 2014. The glacier tongue retreated entirely out of sight behind the Unterer Wächsel mountain. The bridge now led to nowhere. So, reluctantly, the steel cables were dismantled and stored away, while the ladders and cafe were left to the elements…
Tourist deciding to return to safety...
When I returned in 2025, the entire route had been scrubbed from official yellow Swiss hiking signs to keep people out of an active rockfall zone. The forest shop was gone, but scanning the lower walls of the empty limestone canyon, I spotted the ghost of the trail: faint, fractured remnants of weathered wood still clinging to the lower rock face, ripped from their iron anchors by a decade of avalanches.
The ever winding wooden road
Searching for the phantom path down on the valley floor, I stumbled upon massive, weathered concrete foundations and an informational heritage sign. The end of the glacier trail brought me directly to the next great chapter of Grindelwald's tourism history…
Part 2: Phantoms of the Wetterhorn Elevator (1908)
The heavy concrete foundations near the road by the Hotel Wetterhorn are the starting point for the Wetterhorn Elevator (Wetterhorn-Aufzug). Opened on July 27th, 1908, during the height of the Belle Époque luxury tourism boom, this was Switzerland's very first public passenger cable car and the world's first modern aerial tramway system.
View from the bridge
Following the completion of the Jungfrau railway line to Grindelwald in 1893, tourist numbers exploded. A visionary German engineer named Wilhelm Feldmann designed an audacious blueprint to capitalize on this boom by conquering a major mountain peak. The master plan was to carry wealthy Edwardian tourists to the icy, 3,692m summit of the Wetterhorn in four distinct levels:
Stage 1 (the completed section): Soaring from the valley floor up a dizzying 116% incline to the Enge Mountain Station (1,677m), flying right over the valley with superb views of the nearby glacier.
Stage 2: The Cliff Walk: Passengers would then exit the concrete Enge terminal and walk through a covered gallery carved along a horizontal rock ledge (Ischpfad) to reach the next launching point.
Stages 3 & 4: The upper legs were mapped to shoot past the Chrinnenhorn Peak (near the modern-day hut), blast over the Gutz Glacier, and make a final vertical leap directly to the 3,692m summit!
Onwards to the end of the trail...
Feldmann died in 1905 before he could see it running, and the upper stages were never built. The completed first stage operated for just a few short years until the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 collapsed international tourism. The lift made its final run in 1915 and then sat abandoned for years…
A subsequent massive rockslide eventually crushed the valley base station, leaving behind only the concrete foundations, and later the heritage sign I found by chance on a disused road.
(Note: The original historic drive mechanism and an authentic cabin are preserved in the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne, while a segment of the original steel suspension cable rests in the local Grindelwald Museum.)
The scale of the Enge to Wetterhorn problem
To find the last remnants of this phantom project, I had to look upward. My 2025 return journey required one final, ambitious climb…
Part 3: From Tourist to Mountaineer - The Climb to the Gleckstein Hut…
When I returned to Grindelwald in 2025, I was no longer the casual tourist who had marvelled at a staircase fifteen years prior. Armed with a decade of hardcore mountain hiking experience, I was ready to face the brutal, vertical architecture of the Wetterhorn flank on its own terms.
My objective was the iconic Glecksteinhütte SAC (2,316m) via the legendary Ischpfad route, officially designated by the SAC as an "Experience Mountain Path" (Erlebnisbergweg).
2025 view: ladder remnants are above the green
Stepping off the post-bus at the Gleckstein stop (1,560m), the path wasted no time testing my resolve. The route punches through the short Chalberwäldli woods and over a slippery snow field before hitting the sheer, imposing rock wall of the Ischpfad.
View from the moraine lake used for construction
Classified as a T3 alpine hiking route, the path demands sure-footedness and a head for heights. It quickly narrows into exposed rock bands and steep grassy cliffs where the only thing separating you from the huge drop is an occasional thick steel cable bolted securely into the limestone rock.
The remains of the lower cable car station
The climb forces your full focus. Gaining height quickly, you round the corner into Engi, passing directly above the rusted, protected concrete sentinel of the 1908 Enge Mountain Station. (Note that to descend to the station itself is maybe T5 and very dangerous.)
The location of the station prevented its total destruction by avalanches, and it was eventually renovated as a protected historical site. A replica cabin can be found in the Hotel Wetterhorn. From my vantage point above Enge, I could look down and clearly see the remnants of the wooden cafe from the Hehlischopf Bridge…
View up to the Eagle's Nest station
From here, the trail drops slightly, skirting the dizzying rim of the upper canyon before forcing you to navigate the notorious Zybachs Platten (Zybach Plates) - smooth, steep limestone slabs that require careful foot placement right over the void. Directly after, the trail ducks under the roaring Wyssbach Waterfall, treating hikers to a freezing, high-pressure shower of glacial meltwater.
This is undeniably the technical crux of the entire path. The water has polished the limestone bedrock until it is as smooth as glass, and when combined with the constant icy spray, the rock becomes incredibly slick…
Navigating this wet, down-sloping ledge with a vertical drop immediately at your side - with nothing but a single steel cable to hold onto for both the ascent and the descent - is a genuinely scary, heart-pounding test of nerve. It is a moment where your years of mountain experience are put to the test.
In summer 2025 the approach isn't easy
The views of the deeply carved glacier gorge from above are absolutely spectacular. The verticality of the canyon walls dropping into the roaring valley is immense. Yet, from this high vantage point, a profound sense of shock set in: looking down into the very basin I had visited in 2010, the sheer volume of ice that the glacier had lost is staggering.
In just 15 short years, the lower glacier tongue hadn't just retreated; it had violently evaporated from the lower gorge, leaving a massive, naked scar of polished grey stone.
View from above Enge down to café remnants
Pushing past the rocky shelves of Lower Schönbiel (2,050m) and up the exposed upper bluffs, the trail surrendered one last historical secret: the quiet, weathered foundation stones of the original 1870 Gleckstein Hut. Here, long before the modern lodge existed, early Victorian climbers slept under a massive boulder.
Its most famous guest, a young Winston Churchill, spent the night in this exact shelter on August 13th, 1894, before summiting the Wetterhorn himself. Repeatedly battered by avalanches over the next century, it now sits as a haunting stone footprint in the scree.
Finalizing the technical path, you cross the open pastures of Upper Schönbiel, navigating the last steep push before stepping onto the terrace of the modern Glecksteinhütte SAC (2,316m). And there, suspended impressively beside the hut patio, was the main body of the Upper Grindelwald Glacier in all its glory.
While the lower ice tongue had completely vanished from the valley floor below, up here at 2,316 meters, the glacier remained a sweeping, majestic kingdom of bright blue ice, jagged seracs, and roaring waterfalls echoing off the high peaks. Standing on that patio as the sun turned the snowcapped summits to gold, the 15-year odyssey felt complete.
It struck me then, sitting among the other hikers, how beautifully the purpose of this vertical ledge has shifted. The Edwardian planners were arguably crazy to think they could cable-car wealthy tourists up to a terrain this unforgiving. The mountain rightfully reclaimed its solitude from casual commercialism, filtering out the crowds to become a beloved staging ground.
For me, reaching this patio was the triumphant end of a 15-year chapter - a journey where I personally grew from a wide-eyed valley tourist into a capable mountain hiker. But for the others sitting around me, quietly prepping their ropes and checking their equipment for an early wake-up call to summit the Wetterhorn, this hut was not an end, it was just another launchpad…
As I looked out over the wild, enduring ice, I realized that while the landscape had dramatically changed, the spirit of the place remained unbroken: I had grown from a tourist into a mountaineer, but on this very night, others at the hut were preparing to grow into alpinists.
Weather Disclaimer for Hikers
Because the Wyssbach Waterfall crossing and other parts of this route are highly reactive to local weather, hikers attempting this trail should note the following safety criteria:
Rainfall Hazard: In the event of heavy rain or active thunderstorms, the volume of the Wyssbach Waterfall increases exponentially. This can transform the technical crossing from a slippery ledge into an impenetrable, cascading water hazard.
Turn-back Threshold: If water volume is high enough to completely obscure the footing on the rock plate or if you lack a firm, dry grip on the fixed steel cables, do not attempt to push through. Always wait for conditions to stabilize or make a safe retreat back down the lower Ischpfad segments.
The Gleckstein SAC Hut & Glacier
This route was walked by the author in August 2010 and then revisited on July 2025. See my other articles on summer and winter hikes and climbs in this amazing area. Contact me by email for a photo link or to ask questions.
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